I was horrified to read the latest report from the Community Security Trust (CST) into anti-semitic incidents for the first half of the year.

Unfortunately the report is grim reading with a record number of incidents reported in the 6 months to June.

Overall they have catalogued 609 incidents for the first six months compared to 544 for the whole of last year and 276 for the first six months of last year. In the Manchester area there were 143 incidents compared to 125 for the whole of last year.

The CST report identifies an upsurge in issues following the violence in Gaza in January.

These incidents are totally unacceptable and clearly every effort by the authorities has to be made to tackle anti-semitic based violence and assaults of any kind, whether verbal, physical, against the person or property. In our society there is no place for this.

Anti-semitism cannot be justified by the actions of the Israeli Government past or present and is in effect a warped excuse for extremism.

Read the full report here anti-semitic-incidents_report_jan_june_09.pdf